In November, Shanghai Port celebrated a third Chinese Super League (CSL) title but it was not all smiles, hugs and songs. There were tears too as, after eight years at the club, Oscar said goodbye to fans who begged him to stay. The midfielder, still youthful-looking at 33, had closed ears as well as wet eyes and as 2024 ended, confirmed that he was headed home to São Paulo.
Fans and their captain had been through a lot together: success, near misses, the exodus of other stars, the world’s longest and strictest lockdown and the financial issues that crippled some of Shanghai’s rivals. His departure not only marks the end of an era for the player and the club but also the country’s football scene. The last of the big signings made by CSL clubs in the previous decade has now departed. Much has changed since December 2016. When Oscar left Chelsea in a £60m deal he was the most recent – and ultimately one of the last – famous names to head east. Few knew at the time that the spending was slowing down.
Antonio Conte certainly did not. The then coach of Chelsea (a club who reportedly spent £1.38bn on transfers in the 10 years up to 2020, not much less than the approximate figure of £1.65bn splashed out by all the CSL clubs combined over the same period), to warn, apparently without irony, of the “dangers to all teams in the world” that China posed. Oscar may not have grown up dreaming of playing in Shanghai but it is unlikely he had a childhood desire for Chelsea either. The London club were on their way to a 14th-place finish and an average attendance of less than 19,000 when he was born in September 1991. Yet the move to China was reported as being all about the wages in a way that does not happen to players who go to the biggest-payers in European leagues. Whether you are Carlos Tevez, who talked of his “seven-month holiday” at Shanghai Shenhua, or someone who spends eight years and raises a family in China, the headlines still talk about the money.
Oscar said many times the financial offering – he was on €2m a month the last five years – was hard to refuse but he was hardly playing in Outer Mongolia (though Inner Mongolia would have been on the cards if relegation had struck). Shanghai, with its 430kph maglev train that whisks visitors to and from the airport, is a spectacular metropolis of 25 million people. Oscar has talked of how easy it is to live there and often took his children to tackle Shanghai’s four Breakfast Warriors: soy milk, deep-fried dough balls, sticky rice balls and sesame pancakes. As many foreign players who head to east Asia have encountered, the meal invites an evaluation on chopstick stills and ability to eat local and spicy delicacies.
The media in Brazil were not so interested in the niceties of life in China. Oscar complained about being overlooked by his national team. He played 48 times for the Seleção before moving to Shanghai and is still stuck on the same number of appearances. “When I accepted the offer from China I knew that I would be out of the spotlight and out of the Brazil team,” he said in 2021. “It took me a while to accept that. Whenever I failed to make the squad, I would look at the list of players called up. I knew I was better than some of them. There’s a big prejudice against those who play in China. People look down on players just because they’re here.” Tite, Brazil’s coach from 2016 to 2022, called up Oscar’s fellow CSL stars Paulinho and Renato Augusto.
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Oscar outperformed them all in China. His first season was nothing to write home about but the arrival of a certain Vítor Pereira at the end of 2017 made a difference. Operating in a more structured setup under the man who is now the new Wolves manager, the midfielder started to make the Shanghai side tick. A first title came in 2018, ending Guangzhou Evergrande’s run of seven championships. The second crown came in 2023 and a third just a few weeks ago.
Under the attacking instincts of Kevin Muscat and in his final season, Oscar made the top 10 goalscorers list with 14 goals and led the assist charts with 24 to take his overall stats to 77 goals and 141 assists in 248 games. The league may not be as strong as it once was but that is hardly the fault of Shanghai, one of the few clubs not to be faced with the kind of serious financial difficulties that saw Jiangsu FC go out of business as champions in 2021 and Guangzhou, with a parent company in the red to the tune of over $300bn, relegated to the second tier.
Oscar’s experience in China ended on a high. As he heads back to South America there may be talk of all the cash he takes with him but there is much more besides. “I take with me incredible memories and the certainty that I gave my all for this club,” he wrote on Chinese social media. “I leave with a heart full of gratitude and pride for everything we achieved together. This club will always be my home, and this fanbase, my family.”
Source: theguardian.com
